ples, one engaging the attention of the seller while the other fills
her bag or muff, taking turn about until both have stolen sufficient for
the day. Sometimes several trips are made to the same store, but
generally one is enough.

It often happens that store-keepers make mistakes and wrongfully accuse
respectable ladies of shop-lifting, and in such cases the over-zealous
vender suffers greatly, both in loss of custom and, oftentimes, in heavy
damages in a court of law. All stores are provided with what are called
examination rooms. When a person is suspected of being a thief, some of
the attaches of the store, or a detective, as the case may be, taps the
person lightly upon the shoulder, and politely invites them into this
examination room. Here their bundles and packages are searched and, if
warranted, their clothing is personally inspected by some female
attendant. Here is where some very curious scenes are enacted. The
professional thief will resort to tears, expostulations, explanations,
excuses of all kinds, finally begging to be allowed to depart. The
discovery of the bag or the muff, however, invariably settles the case
and the offender is marched off to jail.

In the case of a mistake, as stated, the store-keeper generally makes
the explanations, excuses, and so forth, supplementing them afterwards
by payment in a suit for damages.

Men shop-lifters--or, more properly, store thieves--pursue an entirely
different method, and confine their operations to a far different kind
of store. They go into the thieving business to make it pay, and are not
tempted by the display of merely pretty things. They prefer to operate
in the wholesale stores, and how ingeniously and systematically they
accomplish their object, under the very eyes of people, borders on the
marvelous.

It has often been said that the same amount of ingenuity, thought, care
and planning, which is bestowed by criminals upon the perpetration of
felony, if directed properly upon some legitimate business would render
them successful and rich. Undoubtedly, this is true. What inventive
faculties they must have to devise such a convenient contrivance as the
shop-lifter's muff, the various burglar's implements, the safe-robber's
tools, their delicate files, saws, etc., made from the best of steel,
and thousands of other things used in various ways, including the store
thief's satchel, must be manifest to the most ordinary comprehension.

As this latter a